Romeo and Juliet get Twitter treatment
Royal Shakespeare Company retelling
Bard's Romeo and Juliet with cast of six over
five weeks and 4,000 tweets
Bard's Romeo and Juliet with cast of six over
five weeks and 4,000 tweets
But soft! What tweet through yonder iPhone breaks? It is the east, and@julietcap16 is the sun.
Actually, Juliet Capulet is probably offline at the moment: being only 16, she has to go to school even on her birthday, where to her indignation Twitter is banned. She'll be back. And there's a big party planned tonight that could change all their lives: does any of this sound at all familiar?
The Royal Shakespeare Company today joined with the cross-platform production firm Mudlark and Channel 4's digital investment fund, 4iP, to launch Such Tweet Sorrow, a drama in real time and 4,000 tweets, very roughly based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
The Bard of Avon's 1597 tragedy of flirty, street-fighting teenagers disastrously caught up in the double trauma of real love and their parents' murderous small-town rivalries is already one of the most adapted of his works. It has been continuously reinvented as an opera, a ballet, a musical, a lesbian love story, a geriatric love story and even an ice show.
This time, Juliet is the daughter of a successful property developer. Her mother died in a car driven by the artist Montague; her father will no longer tolerate any of his works in the house, much less his son. Her brother Tybalt is well on his way to being expelled from his latest boarding school, and their older sister Jess, nicknamed Nurse, keeps well out of the way of their new stepmother [see footnote].
Juliet ‑ "Totally haven't introduced myself yet! My name is Juliet. I'm 15 and SO proud to be a Capulet!" was how the actor Charlotte Wakefield announced herself yesterday ‑ spends quite a lot of her time in her room, and has helpfully posted a video of it on YouTube, lingering on a photograph of her late mother.
Such Tweet Sorrow is being improvised by a cast of six RSC actors from a story grid, taking in audience responses and real events, with author Tim Wright helping out Shakespeare. At this morning's launch he said he would have to find a way of working the election into the narrative.
The show will run for the next five weeks. The director, Roxana Silbert, described the production as "not very reverential". Or as Tybalt put it: "Couldn't give a crap!"
Wherefore art thou, @Romeo?
LaurenceFriar, Monday afternoon In my town the big problem is family feuding. Would love 2 talk 2 others about how to deal with *that* problem.
Julietcap16, Monday afternoon Just got home from school! A day full of boring maths lessons!! Boys at shoool are SO minging!! Seriously i so can't wait to find my Cullen.
Julietcap, Monday morning Ok now dads beeping at me from the car!! Gotta dash!! Wish I could tweet at school but ... I can't (I promise I'll be back)
Tybalt_Cap, late Monday afternoon Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death
Tybalt_Cap, midday Monday It has got to be the #worstschooldinner. Salty mash, quiche and beans. Good thing I haven't got the #munchies!
Mercutio, late Monday afternoon Can't believe romeo has been refused a drink. Montague and son are decent people and if you wana victimize it should be those Capulet c****
Mercutio, late Sunday night Big breasted nympho's you've let me down – date with my right hand it is then (or maybe the left). Night fellow twits.
And Michael Billington's tweetish review If it gets kids tweeting on a juvy R and J pastiche, that's OK. But it's more OMG Legally Blonde. Isn't the real WS more about poetry than plot? Give me Baz Luhrmann's movie any day.
• This footnote was added on 16 April 2010 to clarify that some characters bear different relationships to Juliet than in Shakespeare's original.
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